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Damon had not yet returned home. "So far I've had my run for nothing," mused the youth. "Well, I might as well spend the rest of the morning in the boat." He swung his craft out into the lake, and headed back toward Mansburg, intending to run up to the head of the body of water, which offered so many attractions that beautiful morning.
He said Andy and some companions were going on a tour, to be gone a week or more. Well, I'm glad it was no worse. But have you anything special to do, Tom?" "No; I was just riding for pleasure, and if you want me to do anything, I'm ready." "Then I wish you'd take this letter to Mansburg for me. I want it registered, and I don't wish to mail it in the Shopton post-office.
One is he has to work in the bank, and the other is that he has no motor-cycle." Tom swept past house after house along the road, heading in the opposite direction from that in which lay the town of Shopton and the city of Mansburg. For several miles Tom's route would lie through a country district. The first large town he would reach would be Centreford.
Before leaping down on the other side, a jump at which even a practiced athlete might well hesitate, the fleeing stranger paused and looked back. Tom gazed at him and recognized the man in an instant. He was the third of the mysterious trio whom the lad had seen in the Mansburg restaurant. "Wait a minute! What do you want sneaking around here?" shouted Tom as he ran forward.
Tom was thinking so deeply of his new invention, and planning what he would do when he had his electric runabout built, that, almost before he knew it, he had reached Mansburg, purchased the steel tubes, and the stove polish, and was on his way back again. As he was speeding along on a level road, he heard, coming behind him, an automobile.
Tom followed in the footsteps of his parent and had already taken out several patents. Shortly before this story opens the youth had become possessed of a motor-cycle in a peculiar fashion. As told in the first volume of this series, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motor-cycle," Tom was riding to the town of Mansburg on an errand for his father one day when he was nearly run down by a motorcyclist.
"Everything seems to be all right," Tom remarked, "but another inch or so and he'd have crashed into me. I wonder who he was? I wish I had a machine like that. I could make better time than I can on my bicycle. Perhaps I'll get one some day. Well, I might as well ride on." Tom was soon at Mansburg, and going to the post-office handed in the letter for registry.
One evening, as he was preparing for a short night trip to Mansburg, where he had promised to call for Miss Nestor, Tom left his machine standing in the road in front of the house, while he went back to get a robe, as it threatened to be chilly. As he came back to enter the car, he saw some one standing near it. "Is that you, Ned?" he called. "Come, take a spin."
I had to slow up going through Mansburg, but the rest of at time I let it out for all it was worth." "You must be careful," cautioned his father. "You are not an expert yet." "No, I realize that. Several times, when I wanted to slow up, I began to back-pedal, forgetting that I wasn't on my bicycle. Then I thought to shut off the power and put on the brake. But it's glorious fun.
Mansburg was a good-sized city some miles from the village of Shopton, and Tom and his father had frequent business there. The young inventor and the engineer soon had the electric car in readiness for a swift run, for the charging of the batteries could be done in much less than the time usual for such an operation, owing to a new system perfected by Tom.
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